“Before school really starts to mould and shape you — and these days the assessment and unnatural selection begins just the other side of the cradle — you remain a primal being, attracted by the good earth.”
Andrew Collins, Where Did It All Go Right?

In a few week’s time we will be packed away and ready to move to Scotland. The timing is perhaps serendipitous, for at the beginning of May, in England alone of all the parts of Britain, approximately 300,000 children aged between 10 and 11 years will be sitting examinations in English and Mathematics. My younger daughter would have been sitting them too, had we not been moving to Scotland.

The aim of these examinations (these are not “tests” – they are sat under exam conditions) is ostensibly to assess the level of understanding that a child has of the subject being examined: given that knowledge in only two subjects is being assessed, this seems like a rather narrow view of what “education” means, but that’s not the worst of it.

It was while watching a fascinating television programme about the teaching of mathematics a few weeks ago, that I came across a phenomenon I had not experienced at first hand before: the dropping of virtually the entire school curriculum for 11 weeks in order to concentrate on passing SATs. When my elder daughter took her SATs last year — which also included science for the last time — the school sent home a few books for the children to read, and a few past papers were looked at, more for technique than anything else; yet, as I have since learnt, this is unusual. At this time of year, across England, schools are cramming students’ heads with probable exam questions, tips for passing using intelligent guessing, imposing additional targeted homework on children, and running “after school clubs” for those children who are on the borderline between grades.

And here the crux of the matter emerges: the schools (my younger child’s included from this year) are not running extra classes for the least able students, nor those likely to breeze through the exams – no, they are trying to ensure as many as possible get to Level 5. The statistics of most interest to parents of prospective students are the ones that show how many children achieved Level 5 in Year 6. Here is a vicious feedback loop working at full-tilt, for the more parents obsess with SATs results, the more the schools push the exams onto children as essential, and consequently the more the parents become obsessed by SATs results.

Have you any idea what this level of pressure does to the mind of a ten or eleven year old?

The Cambridge Primary Review, a four-year study covering all aspects of primary education in England had the following to say about SATs:

It is often claimed that national tests raise standards. At best their impact is oblique, says the Review. High stakes testing leads to ‘teaching to the test’ and even parents concentrate their attention on the areas being tested. It is this intensity of focus, and anxiety about the results and their consequences, which make the initial difference to test scores. But it does not last; for it is not testing which raises standards but good teaching.

Concern about stress levels is rife on parenting discussion groups; one such comment on Mumsnet was interesting, not only for highlighting the stress, but also raising a very interesting possibility:

The problem is not necessarily her academic progress, Her English is in the top 1/4 of the class and her maths is in the bottom half.

My concern is the stress that this will cause her. Worrying about them consumes her, and I’m worried that exam nerves will cause her to get a very bad mark in the exam, which will then destroy her confidence in her ability.

So the question is more to do with people who have experience of withdrawing their children from the test, is unauthorised absence the only way?

It seems odd to me that parents have the “right” not to have their children vaccinated but there does not seem to be a clear procedure for opting out of these potentially damaging tests

It is possible that the examinations may be boycotted by a large number of teachers in 2010, because of the disruption they cause to the curriculum in general. This would be a good thing for all concerned – except perhaps those head teachers and parents obsessed with getting “the best” for their children (or rather, their school’s reputations) – but in the event of the SATs not being put down with a terminal strike, there are quite a few things you can do to both remove the unnecessary levels of stress on your children, and also undermine the idea that “education” is about rote learning and cramming of useless facts.

Note: Although the text and actions specifically apply to the English school system, there is no reason they cannot be adapted to whatever part of the world and “educational” system you fall under. It is really just common sense.

Low Risk

Most children in Year 6 are being sent home with revision papers and given access to online resources in order to “brush up” on their technique. Why not spend that time with your child, learning how to grow food in the warming soil, or perhaps do some sewing, knitting or cooking as the sun goes down. Then again, you could play a game of cards, or just let them go out and have fun with their friends.

In summary: forget the revision homework and ignore the online tests. What’s the worst thing that could happen? Your child will get a mark that is based on their current ability – that is, if they sit the exams.

We had a great time last year purposefully ignoring the revision books – in fact we sent them back to the school in order to make the point that we had better things to do.

Medium Risk

If you are a teacher then anything rebellious you do, in such a high-pressure situation, may harm your career, so tread carefully if you value your pay packet; nevertheless, there are a couple of things you can do. The first is to ease up on the pressure; if not only for your sanity, but for the good health of the children you teach. Just because you have been told to drop lessons in order to concentrate on SATs it doesn’t mean you have to set mock exams or give extra homework – just teach the subject in hand, and if complaints are made the ideal response would be: “But surely it’s better to teach English / maths than to teach children how to pass exams.”

And you always have your union to fall back on; speaking of which, if your union does call for a SATs boycott, then you are in a much better position to not get involved in the SATs than if you had acted unilaterally (which is definitely a High Risk move).

As a parent, I believe you are within your rights not only to refuse SATs revision for your child, but also to refuse your child entry to the SATs exams themselves. Withdrawing from school entirely on the day(s) of the exams is – strictly speaking – illegal, although I would like to see this come up in court one day! Withdrawing because of an unexpected illness(!) may be another option, or maybe a special outing as described by the Anti SATs Alliance:

In some instances, groups of parents have made a further point by arranging educational visits or experiences on those days. This has always been as the result of getting together with other parents – usually starting with nothing more grand than a chat at the school gates.

Oh, and if you are a student who has the threat of SATs over your head (I like to think The Unsuitablog has a wide demographic) then there is no real reason that you have to put pressure on yourself. Take it easy; if you’re given a mock exam then do the minimum amount of work possible so as not to be noticed – life isn’t about exams, it’s about having a life.

High Risk

Whether you consider this High Risk or not depends on your attitude to Home or Community Schooling, but if you really want to make a statement about examinations, and the aims of the schooling system in general (turning children into nicely-rounded economic units ready for a life of wage slavery) then one strategic withdrawal will not be enough. Examinations are part of school life and, love them or loath them, if you attend a mainstream school then you will be taking exams, and the only way to avoid it is to not attend a mainstream school.

That’s a discussion for another day, but it is undoubtedly an option for quite a few people.

Finally – although with a bit of creativity I’m sure you will be able to think of more undermining actions – try a bit of concerted rebellion across the whole school; simply refuse to take the SATs as a group of parents and children. Go into school with a purpose, and make it clear that none of you want anything to do with SATs and that your children will not be sitting them, making clear the reasons for your refusal (see the introduction to this article). If the school insists that there is no way they can countenance this, or that supervision is not available so they have to take the exams, then withdraw the children from the school for the precise times the exams are taking place.

Of course, the risk you take is your decision, but one thing must always be clear: education is not about school, and it is certainly not about exams – it is about learning the skills and knowledge necessary for the future. The way things are going, that future is anything but certain, and there are some skills we will all be needing that you won’t find taught in any school…

(For more background information, read “The Problem With…Work” on The Earth Blog)

**UPDATE**

This, from The Observer, May 9 2010:

Thousands of primary schools will boycott national tests for 10 and 11-year-olds tomorrow, treating their pupils to class trips and lessons in creative writing instead.

Teaching unions have predicted that half of England’s 17,000 primaries will lock up their test papers in protest, affecting tens of thousands of pupils.

Some 600,000 pupils are due to sit the tests, known as Sats, in maths and English every day this week. Unions argue that the tests disrupt children’s learning and are “misused” to compile league tables, which they say humiliate and demean children and their schools.

Teachers said that in some parts of England, such as Calderdale, Hartlepool, Barnsley and the London boroughs of Tower Hamlets and Kensington and Chelsea, more than half of all primaries have refused to administer the tests.

A survey conducted by the Press Association shows that in 37 local authorities alone, an estimated 1,010 schools have already said they will be boycotting the tests. More are understood to be still considering what action to take.

In Kirklees, 83 out of 152 schools will take part in the boycott, while in Dudley 50 out of 79 will. Manchester city council said half of its primary schools – about 60 – will be taking action.

The unions said a letter from Ed Balls, the schools secretary, warning school governors that it was teachers’ statutory duty and professional responsibility to carry out the tests had backfired and spurred more teachers to join the boycott.

Both Labour and the Conservatives have insisted Sats should not be scrapped, although Labour has said the system is “not set in stone”, while both the Tories and Lib Dems have promised reform.

Headteachers from across the country told the Guardian they would use the boycott to take pupils on trips and have classes in subjects such as creative writing.

Teachers in London have organised a giant anti-Sats picnic near the London Eye. Its organiser, Sara Tomlinson, predicts at least 20 schools will bring their classes. The children’s author Alan Gibbons will tell stories and pupils will bring their favourite books.

Pupils at Bromstone primary in Broadstairs, Kent, will prepare for a local schools’ writing competition while 10 and 11-year-olds at Lindale primary in Cumbria will spend their week going on school trips and being taught orienteering. Children at Westfield junior school in Hinckley, Leicestershire, will visit Beaumanor Hall, a stately home used for military intelligence gathering in the second world war. Other schools said they would continue lessons as normal, but without any test preparation.

Christine Blower, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said: “We know that schools will be using the boycott as an opportunity to do things they wouldn’t normally have time to do, such as trips to museums and parks.”

Nigel Utton, headteacher of Bromstone primary, said Sats were “unbelievably unreliable”. “They are inaccurately marked, the quality of the questions is very poor indeed, they skew the curriculum horribly and they give unnecessary stress to the children. We already assess pupils ourselves.”

Michael Rosen, the former children’s laureate, told parenting site Mumsnet that Sats reduced children to machines and “units of productivity”.

In a question-and-answer session on the site, Rosen wrote: “I think we are obsessed by giving kids scores, measuring them and producing research that is based on statistics. This biometric approach to human behaviour is to my mind corrupting. It tries to reduce the variability in human behaviour. The difference between humans and machines is that with machines, you can keep all the variables in your test constant … you can’t do that with human beings.”

According to BBC News on Monday 10 May, something like 25% of schools in England due to take the tests, are not running them:

The data is not complete, but the councils which have given information cover 73% of England’s 17,000 primary schools.

Among the schools of which the BBC has details, nearly 1,900 (15%) say they will boycott the tests and about 5,650 say they will not (45%).

The councils say they do not know the situation in the remaining 40% of schools.

Following my article on the Team Earth corporate greenwash, I was contacted by a reader – LS – who was keen for me to publish an exposé on the Rainforest Alliance, the corporate-led organisation (sorry, NGO) who’s logo adorns the jars, packets and cups of a great many comsumer products, produced by a great many less than savoury corporations. Think Chiquita (formerly United Fruit), Nestlé, Kraft, Unilever and Coca Cola, and you get an idea of how selective the Rainforest Alliance are in allowing the certification of products.

The following article was written in August 2009 by Samantha Madell, and is available (with pictures) by following this link:

Over the years, many journalists and bloggers have portrayed Rainforest Alliance certification as being equivalent to (or even better than) organic and Fairtrade certification. Unfortunately, this simply isn’t the case.

In truth, the Rainforest Alliance certification standards contain none of the best aspects of either organic or Fairtrade certification. (And, as has been discussed quite extensively in this thread, organic and Fairtrade certification programs are, themselves, far from perfect).

Below, I will address the following issues in more detail:

1) The Rainforest Alliance’s standards are weak, to the point of being meaningless.

2) The Rainforest Alliance’s standards are poorly enforced.

3) By poorly enforcing weak standards, the Rainforest Alliance is able to provide buyers and consumers with an abundance of cheap, “certified” products. This, in turn, has enabled the Rainforest Alliance to gain an unfair advantage over other (more expensive) certification programs which have much stronger standards.

4) the Rainforest Alliance has encouraged consumers to believe that ethical production is no more expensive than non-ethical production. The stark reality is this: ethical production is always more expensive than an exploitative method of production.

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1) The Rainforest Alliance’s standards are weak, to the point of being meaningless.

****
Note: Certification standards sometimes change. This blog post relates specifically to the following certification standards, both dated April 2009, and both current at the time of writing:
Rainforest Alliance Sustainable Agriculture Standard (April 2009)
Rainforest Alliance Farm Certification Policy (April 2009)
These documents can be accessed via www.rainforest-alliance.org
****

How does Rainforest Alliance certification actually compare with Fairtrade and organic certification? The two most obvious points for comparison are pesticide usage, and the payment of premiums to growers. Then there are more general issues such as health care, education, rainforest protection, biodiversity, and sustainability. From what I can gather, the Rainforest Alliance doesn’t do much in any of these areas:

PESTICIDES

Organic certification disallows the use of synthetic pesticides. In stark contrast, the Rainforest Alliance allows the use of a wide range of pesticides. If a pesticide can be legally used in the USA and the EU, then it can be used by Rainforest Alliance certified growers.

As Bill Alpert points out in his article “Do-Gooders Who Could Do Better”, the Rainforest Alliance allows the use of pesticides that can kill the tree frog shown in its logo.

Furthermore, as Gallagher and McWhirter wrote more than 10 years ago, in “Bananas, Bulldozers and Bullets – Chiquita Banana”:

Chiquita’s use of pesticides degrades and destroys rainforests and poisons workers, sometimes fatally. Chiquita executives have found that it is far cheaper to pay willing “environmental” organizations to apply their stamp of approval than to pay for cleaning up the problem. […] Chiquita’s primary partner in green-washing is the Rainforest Alliance

Reference: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Transnational_corps/BananasBullet…

PRICES RECEIVED BY GROWERS

Organic and Fairtrade certification programs attempt to improve growers’ lives (and also reduce the use of child labor) by paying growers a set premium for their produce.

In stark contrast, the Rainforest Alliance pays no such premium. Instead, the Rainforest Alliance simply requires workers to be paid the local minimum wage. This is a meaningless standard for two reasons:

1) the local minimum wage must (by law) be paid anyway, and
2) the local minimum wage is often not enough to live on.

Nothing that I have seen in the Rainforest Alliance’s certification standards explicitly does anything to alleviate grower poverty.

Indeed, the Rainforest Alliance has been widely criticized for failing to alleviate grower poverty. In a public statement addressed to the Rainforest Alliance, the International Labor Rights Forum and the Organic Consumers Association wrote:

When cocoa farmers sell their beans in the conventional market, they routinely receive payment below the world market price which traps farmers in a cycle of poverty. As a result, they must use child labor and cut back on other expenses. If farmers are ensured a fair, living price for their beans, they are more able to institute better labor standards and provide food, health care, education and other necessary services for their families. Ensuring a fair baseline farmgate price in these conditions is not “throwing money” at a problem – it is responding to a fundamental inequality that affects farmers’ ability to implement all standards for sustainability. The price system under Fairtrade certification is thus one of that system’s major strengths.

Reference: http://www.laborrights.org/sites/default/files/publications-and-res…

ACCESS TO EDUCATION, HEALTH CARE, AND CLEAN WATER

The Rainforest Alliance’s website states that families on Rainforest Alliance-certified farms and forests “have access to education and health care”.

This is a profoundly misleading statement, which implies that Rainforest Alliance certification somehow brings about access to these services. It does not. In fact, farmers cannot obtain Rainforest Alliance certification unless and until their workers have access to education and health care. Nothing that I have seen in the Rainforest Alliance’s standards in any way facilitates access to these services.

Health care, education, and clean water cost money. However, while farmers must pay to obtain Rainforest Alliance certification, Rainforest Alliance certification does not, in turn, guarantee growers an increased income, nor any kind of financial premium for their products. In my opinion, this is unethical.

RAINFOREST AND SHADE TREES

Prior to October 2005, the Rainforest Alliance was actively promoting its certified cocoa as being grown “under the canopy of the rainforest”. That claim was false. (The Rainforest Alliance quietly removed that claim from their website, shortly after I made a formal complaint about what I saw with my own eyes at a Rainforest Alliance-certified plantation Ecuador in 2005) …

When I visited a Rainforest Alliance-certified cocoa plantation and fermentary in Ecuador, I saw no rainforest anywhere near the plantation. Furthermore, there were no shade trees of any description.

Perhaps most incredible of all: a large number of mature, productive cocoa trees had been cut down not long before our visit (there were ripe pods hanging from the limbless trunks). The growers told us that they cut the trees down because they had been told that they would be better off growing maracuya (passionfruit). This is clear evidence that growers simply do not receive a high enough price for Rainforest Alliance-certified cocoa.

When I came home and examined the Rainforest Alliance’s certification standards in detail, I was shocked to learn that the standards do not require a plantation to contain any shade trees, let alone rainforest.

Is this a sustainable cocoa plantation?

SUSTAINABILITY

The Rainforest Alliance routinely refers to its certified products as being “sustainably grown”, thereby implying that Rainforest Alliance certification and sustainability are synonymous. Unfortunately, the facts don’t support this claim.

For example, how can a field of felled cocoa trees (as shown above) be described as a “sustainable” cocoa plantation? Obviously, it isn’t.

However, if we suspend disbelief and assume for a moment that Rainforest Alliance certification is synonymous with sustainability – then what about the fact that a product with as little as 30% certified content can display the frog logo, and claim to be “Rainforest Alliance certified”?

Read more about the Rainforest Alliance’s highly deceptive labeling practices at Coffee and Conservation: When is 100% not 100%?

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2) The Rainforest Alliance’s standards are poorly enforced.

In 2005, I personally witnessed child labor at a Rainforest Alliance-certified cocoa facility in Ecuador.

The children we saw were engaged in lugging heavy sacks of wet cocoa beans around. Heavy lifting can damage growing bodies, and it is widely considered to be one of the worst forms of child labor. For example, when INTERPOL recently rescued dozens of child slaves in West Africa, they reported that the children were found working in “extreme conditions, forced to carry massive loads seriously jeopardizing their health.”

It was surprising to me that, amongst our group of Western tourists, there was a high degree of complacency about this child labor.

Several members of our group believed that the boys were family members of other adult employees, and that this made the child labor OK. Other people told me that child labor is generally OK, because (for example) working on the family farm as a child never harmed them.

I have three main problems with this complacent attitude:

1) Child labor, such as we witnessed in Ecuador, is illegal. (Anybody who truly objects to this legal protection of children might want to take the issue up with Ecuador’s law makers, or UNICEF).

2) The use of child labor, as well as being illegal, is in breach of the Rainforest Alliance’s own standards. And finally,

3) Child labor goes hand-in-hand with poverty – and Rainforest Alliance certification does nothing to actively alleviate the grinding poverty which typically leads to the use of child labor.

It is obvious to me that the Rainforest Alliance doesn’t (and probably can’t) effectively enforce its standards. Therefore, their standards are not only weak, they are actually meaningless.

I am not alone in trying to highlight this problem with the Rainforest Alliance. For example, in a study titled “Examining the Rainforest Alliance’s Agricultural Certification Robustness” (2007), Feliz Ventura concluded that “it is impossible to classify the Rainforest Alliance certification process as robust”.

Furthermore, as Justin Trauben wrote for the Organic Consumers Association in June 2009:

with the release of “Tainted Harvest: Child Labor and Obstacles to Organizing on Ecuador’s Banana Plantations”, the veil was pulled by Humans Rights Watch. The farms investigated in the article, farms certified by Rainforest Alliance, relied on child labor, violated basic labor rights and suppressed attempts at unionization. In response, Rainforest Alliance went back and re-inspected the plantations in 2003, but maintained all their certifications.

Perhaps worst of all: in 1998, when Rainforest Alliance-certified plantations were found to be in breach of the standards (specifically, by using pesticides not registered for use in the United States) the Rainforest Alliance responded – not by de-certifying the plantations, but rather by weakening their own standards!

Read more about this unbelievable behaviour here, in an article titled “Environmental group loosens pesticide standards”.

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3) By poorly enforcing weak standards, the Rainforest Alliance is able to provide buyers and consumers with an abundance of cheap, “certified” products. This, in turn, has enabled the Rainforest Alliance to gain an unfair advantage over other (more expensive) certification programs which have much stronger standards.

(I would like to preface my expansion of this point by reminding readers that existing Fairtrade and organic certification programs are far from perfect. However, by numerous objective measures, Fairtrade and organic are both much stronger certification programs than Rainforest Alliance).

In 2008, global sales of Fairtrade certified products increased by 22%. That sounds like very impressive growth – until you compare that figure with the Rainforest Alliance’s sales figures:

The amount of coffee purchased from Rainforest Alliance Certified farms has increased by an average of 93 percent every year for the past five years.

In a document titled “Sustainable is Attainable” (PDF doc), the Rainforest Alliance notes that consumers want environmentally friendly products. The problem that they have identified is that many consumers “do not what to sacrifice anything when buying environmentally friendly products (price and quality)”.

The Rainforest Alliance concludes that “people want to see sustainability mainstreamed”. Their response to this knowledge is to commit to “mainstreaming sustainability!”.

The concept of “mainstreaming sustainability” seems, to me, to be a euphemism for providing an abundance of cheap food items bearing the cute (but essentially meaningless) green frog logo.

In its “Sustainable is Attainable” document, the Rainforest Alliance discusses what a great marketing opportunity the Rainforest Alliance frog logo represents. Take, for example, McDonald’s UK sales of Kraft Rainforest Alliance-certified coffee:

• Unit sales up 15%
• Coffee £ sales up 23%

Hang on a minute … the number of cups of coffee sold has increased 15% (impressive!), but the income earned from coffee sales has increased 23% (even more impressive!). To me, this sounds distinctly like concerned consumers are being gouged.

Remember that Kraft is not obliged to pay anything above the market price for Rainforest Alliance-certified coffee. You should also be aware that Kraft is one of the Rainforest Alliance’s biggest corporate sponsors: according to the Rainforest Alliance’s recent annual reports, Kraft donates an unspecified amount (between $100,000 and $999,999) to the Rainforest Alliance each year (as does Mars).

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4) the Rainforest Alliance has encouraged consumers to believe that ethical production methods are dirt cheap. The stark reality is this: ethical production is more expensive than production methods which exploit people and the environment.

By providing enormous quantities of cheap agricultural products (such as cocoa, tea, coffee, and bananas), the Rainforest Alliance has led consumers to mistakenly believe that ethical production methods can be as cheap as exploitative production methods. Unfortunately, this isn’t true: decent wages and sustainable growing methods are inevitably more expensive than exploitative and non-sustainable methods of agricultural production.

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What can you do?

Don’t take ethical claims at face value: educate yourself; read the relevant standards; ask questions.

Be prepared to pay more for genuinely ethical products.

How do I respond to these issues? By speaking out, and by actively avoiding all products which bear the Rainforest Alliance logo.

Environmental groups used to be funded largely by their members and wealthy individual supporters. They had only one goal: to prevent environmental destruction. Their funds were small, but they played a crucial role in saving vast tracts of wilderness and in pushing into law strict rules forbidding air and water pollution. But Jay Hair–president of the National Wildlife Federation from 1981 to 1995–was dissatisfied. He identified a huge new source of revenue: the worst polluters.

Hair found that the big oil and gas companies were happy to give money to conservation groups. Yes, they were destroying many of the world’s pristine places. Yes, by the late 1980s it had become clear that they were dramatically destabilizing the climate–the very basis of life itself. But for Hair, that didn’t make them the enemy; he said they sincerely wanted to right their wrongs and pay to preserve the environment. He began to suck millions from them, and in return his organization and others, like The Nature Conservancy (TNC), gave them awards for “environmental stewardship.”

Companies like Shell and British Petroleum (BP) were delighted. They saw it as valuable “reputation insurance”: every time they were criticized for their massive emissions of warming gases, or for being involved in the killing of dissidents who wanted oil funds to go to the local population, or an oil spill that had caused irreparable damage, they wheeled out their shiny green awards, purchased with “charitable” donations, to ward off the prospect of government regulation. At first, this behavior scandalized the environmental community. Hair was vehemently condemned as a sellout and a charlatan. But slowly, the other groups saw themselves shrink while the corporate-fattened groups swelled–so they, too, started to take the checks.

Christine MacDonald, an idealistic young environmentalist, discovered how deeply this cash had transformed these institutions when she started to work for Conservation International in 2006. She told me, “About a week or two after I started, I went to the big planning meeting of all the organization’s media teams, and they started talking about this supposedly great new project they were running with BP. But I had read in the newspaper the day before that the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] had condemned BP for running the most polluting plant in the whole country…. But nobody in that meeting, or anywhere else in the organization, wanted to talk about it. It was a taboo. You weren’t supposed to ask if BP was really green. They were ‘helping’ us, and that was it.”

(extracted from Johann Hari, “The Wrong Kind of Green“)

Looking at the summary above, one is tempted to abandon the idea that NGOs (Non-Governmental Organisations) have any part to play in the removal of destructive actions upon the natural world. I think that’s a fair assumption. None of the NGOs come out of this well, not even the apparently “radical” ones like Greenpeace and RAN who are still batting on the side of industrial civilization; but if you had to choose which ones to really steer clear of, and relentlessly attack and expose, a surefire way of choosing is to look for the names of “Corporate Partners”.

If an NGO partners, or receives money from a corporation, then thay are not to be trusted.

Here is one excellent example, that I found while trawling the web:

Team Earth is all of us, working together to make our world a place of clean air, fresh water, plentiful resources and a stable climate, today and far into the future. Team Earth is companies, schools, non-profits, you, your family and friends – everyone who wants to help make sure the Earth is healthy enough to support us all.

It’s about smart, sustainable actions (call it “S-squared”) that each of us can accomplish in our daily lives. Actions that, when multiplied by our social networks, and the cross-section of people that make up Team Earth, will have a huge impact on the health of the planet we call home.

We are setting out to tackle the big challenges of our planet and to our lives – climate change, clean water, healthy food, the ways we are using our resources, and more. Each of us can make a difference, and by working as a team, we will all live better, healthier lives.

This is straight out of the corporate style book; almost excruciating in its “Hey guys, let’s put on a show, right here!” mentality. Alarm bells! Scroll down a few lines and the rationale becomes clear:

Who’s on the Team?

You. Me. The neighbors down the block. Your boss. Parents and kids across the country. People in big cities and small towns.

We are companies like Starbucks and Wrigley. Students and teachers in thousands of classrooms and schools.

Team Earth is anyone and everyone who wants to do the right thing for our shared home, united by a joint commitment, so that when each of us makes a small, personal contribution, the cumulative impact is huge.

Nice bit of community togetherness, and then “WE are companies” – you might be “on the team” but “Team Earth” is a group of companies who are greenwashing as though their survival depends upon it.

Not their ecological survival – nothing as trivial as that, you understand – but their financial survival. They have to be seen to be doing good. And who better to get to run your Astroturf than Conservation International, who proudly display their logo at the top of each page. Mentioned above as a truly dishonourable stain on the reputation of NGOs everywhere, Conservation International are quite possibly the most corporate-friendly NGO around; and if you don’t believe the quotation, have a look at their roster of Corporate Partners which is have the extreme displeasure of reproducing here:

3M
Alcoa
Alpargatas (Havaianas)
Aveda
Bank of America
Barrick Gold
Bella Figura Letterpress
BG Group plc
BP
Brunton Inc
Bunge Limited
Cargill
Celebrity Cruises
Celestial Seasonings
CEMEX
Chevron
Coach, Inc.
Coca-Cola
Compendium, Inc.
Daikin Industries Ltd
Daiwa Securities Co. Ltd.
Darden Restaurants
Dell
DreamWorks Animation
DuPont
ePals
FedEx
FIJI Water
Ford Motor Company
General Growth Properties
Givaudan
Gold Reserve Inc.
Goldman Sachs
Hamilton
Harrah’s Entertainment, Inc.
Hyatt
Intel
International Paper
JPMorgan Chase
Kango
Kimberly-Clark
Kraft Foods Inc.
Marriott International, Inc.
Matter Group
McDonald’s
Monsanto
Newmont Mining Corporation
Office Depot
Organic Bouquet
Pearl Jam
Peter Gillham’s Natural Vitality
Rio Tinto
Royal Caribbean
Save Your World
SC Johnson
Seeds of Change
Shell Group
Sony Computer Entertainment America
Sotheby’s International Realty
Starbucks Coffee Company
Toyota Motor Corporation
United Airlines
United Technologies Corporation
Volkswagen
Walmart
Walt Disney Company
Weyerhaeuser
WhiteWave Foods
Wrigley Company
Yves Saint Laurent

That’s a pretty good rundown of all that is bad in Western commerce – they only need ExxonMobil and BHP Billiton for a full house, but I’m sure they’re working on it as I write.

As for Team Earth, well it’s just another lump of corporate bullshit masquerading as ordinary people who care. The really sad thing is, the people who fall under their spell are likely to think that Team Earth are getting down and doing good work on their behalf, when all the “Team” are doing is making a load of corporate Earth killers look slightly less murderous.

STOP PRESS! Team Earth have a Facebook Group which I would encourage you to join. They have a nasty habit of blocking people who don’t agree with their point of view, and deleting anything that runs counter to their corporate worldview. You might want to post the link to this article, or perhaps this image, which tells the truth about Conservation International…

(click for downloadable full size)

Ever get the feeling that people just aren’t getting it? This is one of those occasions when the email tells the story – especially the responses, which are beyond dumb and show Earth911 up to be just another green smokescreen for business as usual.

Earth911 is Looking for Cool, Green Products
Get involved in our Earth Day 40/40 Giveaway!

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, Earth911.com will feature 40 products and tips about how to recycle them in our Earth Day 40/40 Campaign, as well as host a Giveaway of green gifts to its readers.

Why we’d love to have you: Every year, the weeks surrounding Earth Day constitute the highest influx of traffic on Earth911.com. In exchange for giving a prize to be part of the Giveaway, your company will receive recognition on our site: We’ll announce your organization’s participation in our Giveaway through editorial coverage on Earth911.com, as well as through Twitter and Facebook. You’ll also be featured in our announcement of the winners on Earth Day itself, giving you elevated visibility. Translation: Free advertising during the most popular time on our site!

If you want to learn more: Email Jennifer (below) for more details. While we may not be able to take everyone who wants to participate, we are open to checking out any products that have a “green” spin, especially those that incorporate recycled or recyclable materials. We also have paid sponsorships available as well for an even better deal!

CONTACT
Earth911

Jennifer Berry, Public & Strategic Relations Manager
O: 480-889-2650
C: 602-692-1721
jberry@earth911.com

Our mailing address is:

Earth911.com
1375 N. Scottsdale Rd
Suite 360
Scottsdale, AZ 85257

I had a little think about this, and realised what the ideal prize would be. Ok, I’m not a company and don’t have products with a “green spin” but surely there are some gifts that say far more than others…

Dear Jennifer

Thank you for your email. I am writing on behalf of the anti-greenwashing site, The Unsuitablog, and we would be delighted to take part in your giveaway.

We are offering an empty, plain paper carrier bag filled with life-giving air. Should the owner decide to put purchased goods of any type in the bag then the life-giving air will be forced out of the bag, replaced by an item that required energy to manufacture and transport, not to mention the resources required in its production and the damage caused by the extraction of the fuel required to provide the energy. Thus, the empty bag, unfilled, symbolizes no net increase in greenhouse gases or environmental degradation.

The bag will be pre-owned, and as it starts to degrade naturally it may be composted, thus returning it’s constituents back to the soil.

Please let me know where you would like the item to be sent.

Kind regards

Keith Farnish
The Unsuitablog
Rayleigh, Essex, England.

Hmm, no response…

Hi Jennifer

Could you please acknowledge this – my email was deadly serious.

Regards

Keith

Hi Keith,

My lack of response didn’t indicate any inclination on my part that you weren’t serious. I’ve simply been quite busy as this week has moved along :)

We won’t be using your gift as part of our giveaway. But thank you for submitting it, and please don’t hesitate to reach out to me in the future if I can be a resource to you in any way!

Thanks,
Jennifer Berry

I felt the need to reach out to Jennifer…

Hi Jennifer

Could you tell me why you will not be using my gift? Surely it is far more environmentally sound than any other gift you have been offered.

As I said, we are offering an empty, plain paper carrier bag filled with life-giving air. Should the owner decide to put purchased goods of any type in the bag then the life-giving air will be forced out of the bag, replaced by an item that required energy to manufacture and transport, not to mention the resources required in its production and the damage caused by the extraction of the fuel required to provide the energy. Thus, the empty bag, unfilled, symbolizes no net increase in greenhouse gases or environmental degradation.

The bag will be pre-owned, and as it starts to degrade naturally it may be composted, thus returning it’s constituents back to the soil.

This seems like the best possible symbol of good intentions.

Yours

Keith Farnish
www.unsuitablog.com

I mean, how could they refuse the most environmentally friendly gift I could think of? Surely Earth911 is all about preventing global catastrophe…

Hello Keith,

My name is Raquel Fagan and I am the Executive Editor of Earth911. Thank you for your email. We will not be using your submission for following reasons:

Though we appreciate the gesture, we do not believe that the value the gift will provide the winner will be worth the approximately 38 pounds of carbon it will take to transport the package form London to Phoenix (calculated using CarbonFund.org).

It would be much more environmentally sound to simply have people use a bag they already own, then to send them a bag via postage.

From our home composting system to our re-purposed home decor prizes, we promise that we have given this contest much consideration. We are doing our best to assure that it honors Earth Day as much as possible while still providing people with objects designed to remind them of their personal impact during the other 364 days of the year.

Thanks again, and have a nice day.
—
Raquel Fagan
www.Earth911.com
Executive Editor
1375 N. Scottsdale Rd.
Suite 360
Scottsdale, AZ 85257

480.889.2650 P
480.889.2660 F
—
Got an iPhone? Get iRecycle!

(I had to leave that “iPhone” signature in)

Hmm, I get the feeling that I’m not really communicating what I want to, here. They are happy to accept crappy gizmos made in the Far East by underpaid wage-slaves, then transported halfway across the world, but my paper bag…no, that isn’t nearly “green” enough.

I had to say something:

Dear Raquel

Thank you for your response. Did you think I was going to fly it? I would never do that, it would go by sea and surface. Better than that, I could get a friend in the USA to send one of their bags to you; that should cover any concerns you may have.

Of course, as you think it would be much more environmentally sound for people to use a bag they already own, why is it ok to give away other items? I thought that compost bins or wind up lights, for instance, would require rather more than 38 pounds of carbon to manufacture. They might honour Earth Day, such as it is, but they don’t honour the Earth.

Could it be because the idea of zero-consumption doesn’t fit with your organization’s agenda? I’m assuming those great bastions of green action that sponsor you – BP, Kmart, ExxonMobil and the American Chemistry Council for instance – might sit uncomfortably with “saving the Earth”; certainly I would feel *very* uncomfortable to be taking money from them.

Sort of puts my potential 38 pounds of carbon into perspective…

Kind regards

Keith

No response so far.

(By the way, I checked out how much carbon my paper bag would require to transport, and it’s actually just 2 pounds by ship based on http://www.carbonfund.org/business/calculator#Office. But if you only think by plane, how could you imagine other people not using a plane?)

Have a break? from Greenpeace UK on Vimeo.

From Greenpeace UK – a very good spoof video indeed, for a very important message…

We all like a break, but the orang-utans of Indonesia don’t seem to be able to get one. We have new evidence which shows that Nestlé – the makers of Kit Kat – are using palm oil produced in areas where the orang-utans’ rainforests once grew. Even worse, the company doesn’t seem to care.

So the Greenpeace orang-utans have been despatched to Nestlé head offices in Croydon to let employees know the environmental crimes their company is implicated in, and begin an international campaign to have Nestlé give us all a break.

As we’ve noted many times before, Indonesian forests are being torn down to grow palm oil which is the vegetable fat of choice for companies worldwide, including Nestlé. But while many companies such as Unilever and Kraft are making efforts to disassociate themselves from the worst practices of the palm oil industry, Nestlé has done diddly squat.

By lining the route from East Croydon train station to their office with posters, leaflets and billboard adverts – not to mention orang-utans hanging off the side of the building – we hope to start raising questions within the building about the kind of companies Nestlé is doing business with. And we’re asking them to have a break at 11am this morning to find out what else we have planned. Join us back here at 11am for a quick break too.

The palm oil Nestlé uses in products like Kit Kat is sourced from what used to be rainforest in Indonesia, forest which is being destroyed faster than anywhere else on the planet. One of Nestlé’s suppliers, the giant Sinar Mas group, is responsible for a large part of this arboreal carnage and has a track record of appalling environmental and social practices, not only on its palm oil plantations but also, through its subsidiary APP, its pulp and paper ones. Just take a look at these photos for a small glimpse of what Sinar Mas companies are up to.

The evidence collected in our report, Caught Red Handed, shows how Sinar Mas is not only clearing forests but destroying carbon-rich peatlands. Burning and draining these peatlands releases vast amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, helping to make Indonesia the third largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world.

Meanwhile, the palm oil industry often comes into conflict with local communities over land rights and resources, and the already endangered orang-utans are being pushed closer to extinction. With the forests destroyed, they’re left without their natural sources of food and so are forced to venture into the plantations to eat young palms, where they can be seen as pests.

If you’ve been following Greenpeace for a while, you’ll know we’ve been working to halt the devastation in Indonesia for some time, and two years ago our orang-utans were out in force outside Unilever’s offices. As a result of our work, Unilever has recently dropped Sinar Mas as a supplier and other companies like Kraft have done the same.

Yet despite Nestle’s claims that it expects its own suppliers to uphold high green standards (as detailed in their Supplier’s Code), the Kit Kat makers still continue to do business with Sinar Mas. With other companies not willing to be tarnished by the devastation Sinar Mas is creating, this leaves Nestlé – like the orang-utans – out on a limb.

The recent Fairtrade certification for some of its Kit Kat range shows Nestlé is keen to point to its ethical credentials, but the benefit brought by the Fairtrade ingredients is undermined by the palm oil loaded with wilful deforestation.

It’s time Nestlé took a break from turning a blind eye to what its suppliers are up to.

UPDATE: There’s been so much going here over the last 18 hours that I’ve only now found the time to write an update. Since the last post here, the Kit Kat video which was pulled from Youtube (following a complaint from Nestlé about copyright infringement) was resurrected on Vimeo and has been racking up views like there’s no tomorrow – 78,500 as of this moment. Not the shrewdest move Nestlé could have made, and I liked how Canada’s Globe & Mail referred to it as “a global game of whack-a-mole”.

More Palm Oil hypocrisy here. Remember, so many products contain palm oil that the only way of really avoiding it is by getting a guarantee from the manufacturer that there is no palm oil in that product; if the product says “vegetable oil” then it might contain palm oil!

For UK shoppers, here is a useful guide from the BBC

Willie Walsh, CEO of British Airways has committed the company to cutting aircraft emissions by 40% in just 3 days. From Saturday 20th March, BA will only be operating around 60% of their previous flight schedule, in a drive to dramatically cut greenhouse gas emissions.

This is a remarkable turnaround for a company that has strived to ensure offsetting, rather than direct reductions, is seen as the method of choice for the air transport industry. Other operators are considering similar cuts, with British Airways looking to make up to 100% cuts in emissions within 10 years. This will ensure the industry plays its part in helping prevent the worst effects of climate change.

Watch the video here.

[Oh, ok, it’s a spoof – the strike has struck, and the planes have been grounded. Now that’s how to cut emissions!]